Mashable

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Amir has calculated that it takes about four seconds from the moment a bullet leaves his AK-47, to the moment his enemy is lifeless on the ground.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

“Count yourself. It’s actually quite a long time,” he says the second time we meet.

The shots from the automatic weapon also sound different than when you hear them in action films. A little less bang. More like metallic clicks.

But then you never see film heroes freezing through the winter like Amir did, trying to fall asleep on the cement floor of an abandoned Syrian classroom. They never seem bored, waiting with cellphones with absolutely no signal in one hand and lukewarm cups of tea in the other. They don't fight over who should get the bread. Try to blame the next guy for the mistakes. Have bad breath.

In Amir’s world, the heroes are Sunni extremists fighting for a global Islamic Caliphate. The enemies are the infidels. Weeds to be removed from the face of the earth.

Jakob (center) at his fifth birthday party. Amir is to the left. As in the preceding picture, Amir's face has been pixelated to avoid disclosing his identity. (See editor's note at the end of the story.)Jakob Sheikh

The first time Amir counted those four seconds, it was a cool, early March morning near war-torn Aleppo in northern Syria. It was misty, and as usual the streets were empty. Those who were forced out hurried along, worried expressions on their faces as they hugged the walls of the houses to avoid snipers.

Along with six other fighters from the Jabhat al-Nusra rebel group, Amir had morning duty at a crossroads close to the city’s western approaches. That's when they were attacked by President Bashar Assad’s forces.

Initially it was only sporadic fire. Then more intense. It took a minute or so to determine where the shots were coming from, but when a deserted group of buildings was identified as the target, Amir claims it didn’t take too long to beat the enemy. And as the soldiers — there were about 10 — fell lifeless to the ground, he was filled with pride. Amir believed he'd helped to exterminate a small bit of evil. He was a step closer to his dream of an Islamic Caliphate.

As soon as the area was secure, his group ran towards the bodies with their weapons aloft in triumph.

We kicked their bodies and we smeared them with their own blood

“We thanked God that the kuffar died. We kicked their bodies and we smeared them with their own blood. They are dogs, you know. Animals that deserve to die. I tell you, I was truly happy. Every time we killed the rafidah [Ed: pejorative for Shia] I felt a great, great happiness."

Amir (left) and author Jakob Sheikh (center).Jakob Sheikh

Amir and I are childhood friends. We grew up in the same estate in Western Copenhagen. We played in the same courtyard, played football together at the street pitches in Saxogade Road, bought slush-ice and small blue chewing gums with stickers of American wrestlers in the same tobacconist on New Carlsberg Road.

We are both 27 years old — Amir was born four months before I was. During our childhood we shared the same interest in sports and computer games. Like me, Amir has a Danish mother and a Pakistani father. Our fathers even come from the same region in Pakistan, the military city of Rawalpindi.

Yes, Amir and I have had more or less had the same upbringing, a path to ease in Danish society. We have been formed by the same institutions, saw the world through the same eyes.

Amir's face has been pixelated to avoid disclosing his identity. The author, Jakob, is in the middle wearing a white sweatshirt.Jakob Sheikh

But our lives have taken completely different paths. How did that happen? I find it difficult to understand. In fact, I had no idea what had happened to Amir before I met him by chance on Istedgade Road a few weeks ago.

“Hi Bro. What gives?” he asked and gave me a friendly hug.

It was warm outside but Amir was wearing a big, black down jacket drooping loosely over a pair of dark Adidas training trousers. He had a crew cut, his eyes had a warm glow and he looked as if he compensated for his small stature with regular visits to the training centre. His stubble was not much longer than mine, and while we were talking Amir had his hands politely behind his back, to show he was listening with interest to my story.

I, on the other hand, was more interested in his. And a few minutes into the conversation it took a more interesting turn.

The polite man full of empathy, had killed in God’s name.

“I’ve been in Syria, my friend,” he said, adding, “I’m going back soon."

Amir, my childhood friend had become a jihadi. The polite man full of empathy, had killed in God’s name. I, on the other hand, have been employed as a journalist. I write about jihadi just like Amir.

Soon Amir was to embark on yet another crusade. This time for what is arguably the most violent terrorist group of all: Islamic State.

Amir's prayer beads and ring, which he wore when fighting in Syria.

Mads Nissen

Amir traveled to Syria because he felt powerless. Back home in his two-room Copenhagen flat he booted up his laptop and trawled the depth of the Internet for videos of battles from the Syrian civil war. As far as Amir was concerned it was the same story over and over: innocent civilian Sunnis being persecuted, tortured, raped, mutilated and killed while the rest of the world sat back and watched. The same thing was happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and the Balkans.

“These are my Muslim sisters and brothers who are dying,” he thought.

“It’s my duty to help them. It’s my duty to help eradicate the infidels.”

And the thought that made the difference:

“If I just stay home, God will punish me.”

So on one early November morning in 2013, Amir left. He took the Metro from the suburb of Vanløse to Copenhagen Airport, showed his Danish passport to the police at the departure terminal and boarded a plane to another European capital. Two days later he flew on to Hatay in southeast Turkey on the border with Syria.

It was easy as pie.

With the help of another Danish fighter called Fadi, Amir arranged to stay as a guest with a young Turk in the border town of Reyhanli who sympathized with the militant Islamic rebels.

It took two days to buy equipment — camouflage trousers, a pair of fashionable soldier’s sunglasses with mirror coating, a cheap Samsung cellphone and a Turkish SIM card. Travel into Syria went through "The Gate," a hilly area about 10 kilometers north of the Bab el-Hawa border crossing.

Since The Gate is not particularly well-guarded it has become the entry point to northern Syria for many jihadi. As soon as Amir arrived on Syrian soil, his contact Abrar picked him up in a white Toyota van and drove 30 kilometers to northern Aleppo.

The violence, hatred and blood of the conflict came as a surprise, even to a convinced Islamist. Bodies were often strewn in the roads and a population suffered from hunger.

For Amir, his war began with small jobs. Driving weapons, water and generators back and forth for his brigade of some 25 fighters. Most were not Syrians, but young men with Western passports, including some Danes and Swedes, all of whom swore allegiance to Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

The Security and Intelligence Service says that more than 100 fighters have left Denmark for Syria.

After a few weeks — Amir remembers it was a day in December 2013 — he got caught in crossfire for the first time. He was ecstatic. It was as if the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Everything became clear.

In the following months Amir took part in several battles with regime forces. But in late spring, after several months in Syria, he returned home to Denmark. Replete with his experiences of war. Hungry for much more.

The Security and Intelligence Service says that more than 100 fighters have left Denmark for Syria, and they represent the most potent threat against Denmark the country has seen for many years. Apart from Belgium, no other Western county boasts a higher proportion of foreign fighters measured by its population.

Look closer at who have gone and several interesting patterns emerge:

Usually they have not grown up at the bottom of society, they are not necessarily weak and vulnerable, they often come from moderately religious families, speak fluent Danish, know their way through Danish society and have been through the Danish educational system.

Amir fits this scenario perfectly.

Amir was five years old when he moved into my apartment block in the Vesterbro neighborhood of Copenhagen with his family. In the backyard, we would play hide-and-seek or have toy gun battles with the other children. Amir was usually the first to leave, when his mother called him up for dinner from the window on the fourth floor.

Mads Nissen

My first memory of him comes from an hour of hide and seek in our courtyard. There was Amir, Sahib, Omar, Rashid, Henrik and me. I don’t remember who had to find the others, but I do remember where the others hid: behind stairwells, playhouses, dustbins and overfilled washing lines. But I was good at hiding and insisted on not giving myself away before I was discovered. Which I wasn’t — and I was forgotten.

After quite a long time I crept angrily up to our flat without telling my friends. They were all involved in another game in the courtyard. Except Amir. Suffering a bad conscience he came up and knocked at the door to apologize. That was when I knew we would be good friends.

As the years went by, our games got boring, so Amir and I joined the local football club Vestia almost at the same time. He wasn’t very good with a ball, but because he had rare American football cards the rest of the team could swap, no one dared tease him on the pitch. Amir with his empathy and mild manner quickly charmed his teammates in the same way he had befriended me. And I don’t know many parents whose 12-year-old son comes home with dandelions he has picked himself after a football match.

You immediately fell for this small Danish Pakistani with the hooked nose, black saucepan hairstyle and washed out superhero t-shirts.

Amir’s father drove a taxi at night, so he slept during the day. As a result I only met him a few times and actually can’t remember him now. Shortly after he arrived in Denmark in the beginning of the 1970s, he met Amir’s mother, a loud, red-haired and fiery woman who worked in a pub on a street off Istedgade. Amir’s father was a Muslim, but not too Muslim that he refused to live with a woman who chain-smoked and earned her wage serving alcohol.

Tired of playing the same soccer matches with the same kids from the neighborhood, Amir and I signed up at the local club, Vestia, almost at the same time. Membership in the club, though, was brief. Although everyone liked Amir, he never really fit in — in part because he wasn't a particularly talented player.

Mads Nissen

Amir and I lost contact with each other at the age of 13. No particular reason — we just grew apart. As time went by, our groups of friends were just different. Amir went to the same school in Vesterbro that his older sister and two older brothers had been to. It was here he began to hang out with a group that was somewhat more rough than my friends, at my private school in a posh suburban neighborhood. Up to now, our pranks were letting out the air from bicycle tires or tagging wood in the park. But as time went on I got more and more Danish friends who held film evenings and played funk music, while Amir’s friends became interested in cars — particularly those that were easy to get into.

The change was abrupt. One day Amir just stopped wearing his superhero t-shirts, in favor of skater trousers, new caps and metal necklaces. On the few occasions I was with Amir’s new friends, it was clear to everyone that I was chicken, and chickens were decidedly not "in."

And so our lives diverged. I began at a private high school in Østerbro; Amir went into the 10th form at his school. Some of his friends went to prison, others went for further education and ended up as consultants, shop-owners and carpenters.

Amir ended up nowhere.

When Amir walked through the gate for the first time, he had no idea about the religious revival that would grab him.

The industrial estate between Amerikavej Rd. and Rejsegade Rd. in Vesterbro is no longer an abandoned shell. It is a neo-creative mecca with a furniture showroom, upmarket bakery and integrated pre-school. On a Saturday in September, with Amir squinting his brown eyes to keep out the afternoon sun, it is difficult to imagine the place as a center for radicalization.

“They took me home after prayers at the mosque. That was where I was guided onto the right track,” he says.

It is the first time we meet after the episode on Istedgade. Surrounded by people walking their dogs, bearded hipsters and prams, Amir shows me his past.

We have agreed I should write a story about our friendship, and where it had gone. He is proud of the path he has chosen. And provided that I don’t publish his surname, he has nothing against telling people about his change from an urchin to a militant jihadi.

We walk toward the mosque. When Amir walked through the gate for the first time, he had no idea about the religious revival that would grab him — a revival owed particularly to a group of four young Pakistani men.

“It wasn’t planned. I just happened to meet them,” Amir says.

The Madni mosque on America Road in the Vesterbro neighborhood of Copenhagen, which primarily attracts local Pakistani Muslims, is known for its moderate interpretation of Islam, focusing on peaceful coexistence. But in the square in front of the mosque, Amir met four young men who would become crucial figures in his religious awakening.

Mads Nissen

He was about 17 and had just dropped out of technical school, where he had studied automobile mechanics. After his 10th form Amir had a dream of opening his own sports car garage — the kind of underground garage you see in American gangster movies. But when his parents divorced and he and his brother had a serious disagreement, he began looking for comfort elsewhere. Comfort the four men could provide.

Amir began regularly visiting the mosque on Amerikavej Road. Then, as now, the mosque practiced a moderate interpretation of the Koran. But the four men found the inquisitive teenager. As a sort of religious induction, they gave Amir booklets and DVDs. Using quotes from the Koran, these told him how the messages that he heard in the mosque should really be interpreted. The messages were quite clear, black and white. Things were either right or wrong. There was no place for doubt.

“They were good to me. I knew nothing at the time and they taught me lots,” Amir says.

I began to see that many people around me were not living according to Islam.

After the pamphlets and DVDs, he was given new lessons. He was taught to fear God and only God. He was to live using the Koran’s precise instructions and strive after "Salaf," to live in a society such as the time of the Prophet Muhammad and the two generations after him.

It became Amir's daily routine to visit Pakistani jihadi websites, such as the al-Qital forum that swears oath to the militant ideology of al-Qaeda. He read violent Arabic manifestos translated into English or Urdu and saw videos of suicide bombers giving their lives for Allah.

Eventually the pamphlets, DVDs and websites were swapped for informal lessons at the home of one of the four men in the Sydhavn quarter. Amir felt he had finally found a group of people who shared his values, people who looked after his welfare.

“I began to see that many people around me were not living according to Islam. You could see from the way that they lived that there is a great difference between those who believe and those who do not,” Amir says.

Later, I discovered Amir referred to his own mother. In a newly discovered world, in which women should cover themselves and deny themselves tobacco and alcohol, it was a problem that his mother worked in a pub, spoke with other men and let her red hair flow down for everyone to see.

Amir approached his mother with these issues. She was furious, and according to Amir she told him not to show himself at home again until he was willing to accept his family as they accepted him.

“But everyone has to make a choice. It’s as simple as that,” Amir says.

That was the end of that relationship. And as Amir became more and more extremist, his circle of friends became smaller and smaller. There were not many who could accept his fundamentalist views, and several of those who were able to do so got married, started families and quietly withdrew from the milieu.

Amir's radicalization took place over several years. At 17, Amir had become part of a small religious cell and he started getting religious lessons at the home of one of his older mentors. It took place in an apartment on the second floor of this building — the one where the light is on in the windows.

Mads Nissen

His thoughts whirled through his head. It began to worry him that as the only man in his circle of friends, he was not yet married. When his friends left for home and their families after work, he felt as if in a vacuum.

Back in the radical Islamic environment in Vesterbro, there were only a small handful of extremist Muslims. Amir had met two of them while he worked as a telephone salesman for a company in Islands Brygge. They, as he, believed that the goal was an Islamic Caliphate — and armed struggle the means by which to achieve it.

The rebellion against President Assad in Syria began to expand at the same time and Amir felt the yearning to help his Muslim brothers and sisters.

“Everyone wants to help,” he says.

It seemed shameful to stay behind.

But although Amir saw himself as a militant Islamist, the idea of becoming an armed jihadist was far from his thoughts. Jumping from a safe life with a wage, home, national health coverage and television service to a bloody Syrian battlefield was too far.

But he then watched a large number of videos filled with gruesome operations carried out by the Assad regime. One evening in late summer his telephone rang as he was on his way home from work. At the other end was one of his closest friends, Fadi.

“Brother, I have something to tell you,” Amir remembers Fadi said.

“So how are things?” Amir asked.

“I’m leaving. Going down to Syria. To jihad,” Fadi said.

“Really? Are you serious?”

“Wallahi [By God], I mean it brother.”

Later that same evening, Amir lay in his single bed and stared at his religious posters. Thoughts raced around his head. Fadi was on his way to war. He was not only going to war, but he was proving he "was not just someone who talks and talks without doing anything." As Amir saw the situation, Fadi was following the ideology that both of them believed in. Fadi was a man of action; and a man of action is honorable.

But what about Amir? Should he just continue selling telephone subscriptions from a boring desk on Islands Brygge? Or follow his friend’s example and become a crusader for his God? It seemed shameful to stay behind.

When Fadi some weeks later had arrived in Syria and Skyped home to his friend, it was as if everything fell into place for Amir.

“I could hear on Fadi how wonderful it was,” Amir says.

“He told me how Muslims lived and how you got closer to God from jihad. It was then I decided to go down there."

The Red Courts on Saxo Street in the Vesterbro neighborhood of Copenhagen are no longer painted red. Here, on the asphalt, Amir and I started playing soccer together. Later Amir's interest in the game waned as he made new friends, some of them engaged in petty crime. Amir only left their orbit when he found peace in his religiosity.

Mads Nissen

It takes a bit before we approach the subject.

Amir and I have left the mosque that started his religious path to go up to our childhood home. On the way we pass the park where the older boys had sometimes allowed us to play football.

“Do you realize how bad you were at playing football?” I ask.

Amir smiles before answering. “Yeah, yeah. Well, you can’t be good at everything."

“Don’t you miss those times? I mean, you seem so serious now. Don’t you miss the fun we had?”

“These are different times now. I am a Muslim, Alhamdulillah. We are at war now. The West and kuffar [unbelievers] are killing Muslims around the world,” Amir says.

“What do you mean by unbelievers? All those who do not live in the Caliphate?”

Amir hesitates.

“Er...yes. You could say that."

Hopefully, one day you will be led on the right path. Then you’ll see how beautiful an Islamic state is.

“Am I an unbeliever then?” I ask.

“What do you mean, brother?”

“I am happy to live in Denmark. I don’t think I want to live in the Caliphate."

“Hopefully, one day you will be led on the right path. Then you’ll see how beautiful an Islamic state is."

“But what if I don’t want to be led on the right path? What then?”

Amir looks at me questioningly.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“I mean there’s also the possibility that we two are just different and want to live in different ways. That the one does not have to convert the other."

“Just take it easy, my friend. Inshallah [If God wills], you will be guided onto the right path,” he says.

We walk on for a bit without saying anything. I think through the paradox that the man I am speaking to on the one hand praises fanatic movements like Islamic State, and on the other seems like a loving and old forgotten friend. Amir asks me about my family. He says he remembers my fifth birthday, my father’s mustache and that he has seen my articles and wondered how I was doing.

Our walk continues with exchanges of old memories: angry concierges, mythical football stars, dog excrement in the park and the old woman with stubble we both were so afraid of.

As we approach our childhood home, the door is open into the yard. Amir suggests we go in to avoid the noise from the cars on the road. I tell him the story about our game of hide and seek that ended up starting our friendship.

“Yes, of course,” I answer, without meaning what I say. We look at each other and a couple seconds of awkward silence follows.

Syrian people inspect the site of a car bomb attack at a market in the central city of Homs, Syria.

EPA

Amir will offer everything — his life if necessary — for an organization the West has labeled a terrorist group

“But why do you think that we ended up so differently, given that we grew up together?” I ask.

“I met some people who could help me. They looked after me. You probably met other people,” Amir says before continuing. “Seriously. You’ve become far too Danish. You’re with Danes all the time, you’re a journalist and stuff...”

“And what’s wrong in that?” I ask.

“It’s very Danish,” he says.

“I don’t mind being Danish. We were born and grew up here. I mean, we’re Danish,” I add.

Amir smiles again. I’m sure he knows we’ll never really be friends again. But on this afternoon it is good to see my childhood friend again. And it seems as if Amir feels the same way.

But he will be going back to fight. He says he is getting restless; he misses that feeling of happiness. And this time he does not expect to return to his flat and family in Denmark.

A frame grab from video released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Oct. 7, 2014 shows an alleged Islamic State militant claiming to be inside the Syrian 17th Division Military Base just outside Al-Raqqah, Syria.EPA

“You see, it’s now or never. We have a chance to become good Muslims. In Syria we have a Caliphate now, thanks to Dawla [Islamic State]. It is a Muslim’s duty to do hijrah — to emigrate to our Muslim homeland. There are many thousands of Muslims down there and it has become a beautiful country with a beautiful Islamic lifestyle. People can live quiet lives that are correct according to Islam,” Amir says.

So when he goes to Syria again next month, he will not be joining Jabhat al-Nusra in Aleppo, but their enemies, the Islamic State, in Raqqa. Here, Amir will offer everything — his life if necessary — for an organization the West has labeled a terrorist group, which has shocked the rest of the world by declaring an Islamic Caliphate and beheading two American journalists.

In Amir’s world, the videos of the beheadings were not brutal, but "beautiful."

“You cannot differentiate between a cowardly state and its cowardly citizens. Otherwise you’d never be able to go to war, and the Caliphate would never be spread throughout the rest of the world. Those two journalists were enemies of Islam,” Amir says.

It’s shocking to hear your childhood friend praise such gruesome decapitations. Absurd. Particularly because I travelled to Syria only a few months ago and could have ended my days in orange prison garb, just as James Foley and Steven Sotloff, my head cut from my body.

I interrupt: “Amir, do you mean that you are actually prepared to die for an Islamic Caliphate?”

“Of course, brother. Why should I be scared of dying?” he says.

“What if everything you think will happen after death doesn’t happen?"

“I have my belief and it is very strong,” Amir says and slaps the palm of his hand to his heart.

“Some would say that the Islamic State is a barbaric terrorist organization?”

“If people want to call me a terrorist, go ahead. I don’t care what kuffar say. I’m proud of being a Muslim.”

“And what about your family? How do you think they will react if you die?”

“Only God decides whether we are to live. There’s no way we can change that anyway.”

A picture taken from Turkey shows an Islamic State flag displayed by militants in the east of the Syrian city of Kobane, by the Turkey-Syria border, near Sanliurfa on October 7, 2014.

Sedat Suna/EPA

I call Amir one of the following days. I have a couple of things I want to ask him. Amir doesn’t have time to talk; he is already late for evening prayers.

“I’ll call you later, my friend,” he says.

My friend?

If I was Amir’s friend, I would have gone with him to evening prayers. On the way we would exchange YouTube links showing Islamic preachers on our iPhones. We would have sworn to each other that it is just a question of time before the Islamic Caliphate spreads to Europe and the United States.

We would call the Americans "snakes," avert our eyes if we saw a woman walking alone in the street, and deride her as we ate kebabs and hummus and drank mango juice at Amir’s favorite restaurant on Nørrebrogade Street.

We wouldn’t care about our birthdays, and would look forward to Ramadan. I would give up my job as a journalist, and together we would open a garage and earn as much as we could so we could pay zakat to many poor Muslims in Denmark.

We would praise the pilots in the hijacked planes that flew into the Twin Towers, and we would call the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London the work of the creator. Tears would come into our eyes when we heard the Islamic State’s self-appointed Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, call Muslims across the world to battle for a Sharia state.

We would see Denmark as a temporary but much too materialistic way station, hate democracy, love our families and dream of a life in the everafter, but first fulfill our duties here on earth.

We would love each other, but never more that we loved our God.

That is why, Amir, we will probably not be friends again.

Behind the Story: This story was originally published on Danish newspaper Politiken.

On three different occasions, Jakob Sheikh has interviewed Amir, who doesn’t want his full name published, as he risks being prosecuted for his participation in the Syrian civil war. Politiken knows Amir’s identity. To avoid disclosing his identity, Amir has asked Politiken and Mashable to leave out a number of details, including the European airport that he traveled to before flying to Turkey, and the kindergarten he attended. Parts of Amir’s account, for example, his whereabouts in Syria, cannot be verified entirely.

Amir has given Politiken and Mashable permission to publish the photographs used in the story.